51–58 of 58 posts
Jamison Go reported that his beetleweight fighting robot, Silent Spring, used a drum weapon made using a Desktop Metal system. The drum was printed using 4140 steel, then hardened the traditional way. It apparently yielded very good results, winning the beetleweight category at Bot Blast. You can search YouTube for videos of it in action.
Video of Silent Spring https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRLupZvjcrk
Jamison Go reported that his beetleweight fighting robot, Silent Spring, used a drum weapon made using a Desktop Metal system. The drum was printed using 4140 steel, then hardened the traditional way. It apparently yielded very good results, winning the beetleweight category at Bot Blast. You can search YouTube for videos of it in action.
I am really surprised to see Jamison being mentioned here as if he were a household name. I remember him from the Invention Studio at Georgia Tech.
Jamison Go reported that his beetleweight fighting robot, Silent Spring, used a drum weapon made using a Desktop Metal system. The drum was printed using 4140 steel, then hardened the traditional way. It apparently yielded very good results, winning the beetleweight category at Bot Blast. You can search YouTube for videos of it in action.
i <3 jamison hes so dreamy
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Very impressive video. Questions that page completely doesn't answer, though: How much does the system cost? ($5k to "reserve", but what's the final cost? Their "downloads" page, of all places, has a price sheet for the "studio" system, but not the "production" system.) What does the software workflow involve, from CAD software to printing? Also disappointing that, despite having an innovative piece of hardware , the…
> despite having an innovative piece of hardware, they still treat the software as heavily proprietary as well. My client created an innovative piece of hardware without investing in proprietary software. In a couple of months, he found cheaper clones offered on aliexpress and taobao. While the design was good, the product failed commercially. Then the company found me, I’ve created heavily proprietary software for t…
That much makes perfect sense, and I would imagine that something as novel as a new metal 3D printer like this would want custom software to drive it as well. That doesn't prevent that custom software from being Open Source. And when you're talking about a product like this, in this price range, designed to support manufacturing with very tight tolerances, clones (and adoption of such) seem quite unlikely, even less so if they keep innovating with it. I'd rather see the "stickiness" provided by support, rather than software.
Because inevitably, software written by a single vendor for their hardware always feels very particular to their workflow, not integrating with anything they didn't anticipate, and not allowing much flexibility. And CAD workflows are exactly the kind of area where everyone has their own set of customizations they want to be able to do. I'd like an Open Source library and an API, not an opaque kiosk.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Expertise and materials. Casting aluminum is easy, but not very useful. Doing this yourself you can't guarantee grain structure/size, inclusions/porosity, or temper. Plus it's usually plenty easy to mill from billet since aluminum is so soft. Gold/silver is also relatively easy. You need better equipment since the temperatures are 2x higher. Strength isn't important, so casting stuff in gold/silver is quite common. O…
For $360k you could just hire a materials scientist for three years, and give them $20k/year to play with.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> despite having an innovative piece of hardware, they still treat the software as heavily proprietary as well. My client created an innovative piece of hardware without investing in proprietary software. In a couple of months, he found cheaper clones offered on aliexpress and taobao. While the design was good, the product failed commercially. Then the company found me, I’ve created heavily proprietary software for t…
> In addition, creating software from scratch specifically for the given hardware delivers better overall value for the end users. That much makes perfect sense, and I would imagine that something as novel as a new metal 3D printer like this would want custom software to drive it as well. That doesn't prevent that custom software from being Open Source. And when you're talking about a product like this, in this price…
I’d rather see the product just works not requiring much support. Ideally, not requiring any support at all. This works OK for consumer electronics. I don’t see why industrial hardware can’t be designed the same way.
> not integrating with anything they didn't anticipate
Desktop software often solves the interop problem by supporting open file formats on input. For 3D printing, the de-facto one is STL. You can export this format from every CAD or 3D modeling software.
> I'd like an Open Source library and an API, not an opaque kiosk.
I prefer opaque kiosks. Opaque kiosks just do their job. Good ones do it well. Libraries and APIs require substantial amount of time to RTFM, integrate, debug integration, update integration with API updates, and so on.
Also, not everyone is a programmer. I can use APIs and libraries when I need to, but most people just can’t. For an average Joe, these things are useless. Even harmful: creating good libraries and APIs has costs (documentation, examples, developers support); these resources might have been spent on useful features instead. The equation changes if the product attracts large user base and third-party developers start using these APIs to create value. But market for 3D printers is currently very small, i.e. this is unlikely to happen.